One moment, it was a warm summer’s day with a few clouds in the sky. No-one, understandably, knew what to do to help the victims of this newest of illnesses.Everything changed in an instant.
She described people with great sheets of skin hanging off of their bodies grotesque swollen faces torsos covered with large blisters.Īs in Hiroshima, many in Nagasaki died after the immediate impact of the bomb had gone away from mysterious ailments which we now associate with radiation poisoning. People caught up in the blast came to Koba for help and Fujie Urata, who lived in Koba and had seen a large flash, could not believe what she was seeing. Those who lived on the Koba hillside, just three and a half miles from ground zero, were protected from the blast by a mountain. After the bomb had gone off, she saw what she thought were two large lizards crawling into the shelter she was in, only to realise that they were human beings whose bodies had been shredded of their skin because of the bomb blast.ĭeath and injury in Nagasaki and the surrounding areas, depended on where people lived. One survivor, Sadako Moriyama, had gone to a bomb shelter when the sirens sounded. The city’s medical facilities were not totally destroyed by ‘Fat Man’ as at Hiroshima – but nobody was capable of coping with those who were injured in the blast. The horrific injuries suffered at Hiroshima were also witnessed at Nagasaki. However, considerable damage was done to the city. The fires simply could not cross these gaps and they burned out. Curiously, the city’s train service was not interrupted and the fire damage that followed Hiroshima did not occur in Nagasaki as many parts of the city were broken up by water. An area about 2.3 miles by 1.9 miles was destroyed but other parts of the city were saved from the blast. Where the bomb blast hit at its peak, massive damage was done. Its blast was bigger than ‘Little Boy’s’ but its impact was reduced by the natural topography of the city. 800 gallons of aviation fuel had to sit in its fuel tank – it could not be used for the engines but the plane had to carry its weight and get nothing in return from the fuel.
The flight commander, Major Sweeney, found that one of the fuel pumps on the B29 was not working. The crew of ‘Bockscar’ gathered for their takeoff at 03.40 hours, August 9th, at Tinian Island. Both ‘Bockscar’ and ‘Enola Gay’ were B29 Superfortress bombers. Whereas the ‘ Enola Gay‘ had had a relatively uneventful journey to her target at Hiroshima, the same was not true for the plane picked to drop the next atomic bomb – ‘Bockscar’. However, fate and the weather was to be Nagasaki’s undoing. The city was also broken up with stretches of water. Also, the way Nagasaki had grown as a port meant that the impact of a powerful bomb might be dissipated as the city had grown across hills and valleys. But it was not a favoured target as it had been bombed five times in the previous twelve months and any damage caused by an atomic bomb would have been difficult to assess. Nagasaki was a major shipbuilding city and a large military port. Therefore, the Americans were left with just two targets – Kokura and Nagasaki. The third potential target was Niigata – but this was withdrawn from the list as the distance to it was considered to be too great. Nagasaki was only added to a list of potential targets when Kyoto was withdrawn (it had been the secondary target for a second bomb) because of its religious associations. The three potential targets for a second bomb were Kokura, Kyoto and Niigata. Nagasaki was not America’s primary target.